Vulkan SDK, Tooling, Samples & Developer Guide Updated For Ray-Tracing

Vulkan 1.2.162 was released at the end of November with the ratified Vulkan ray-tracing extension for multi-vendor use. The Khronos Group today is announcing the updated Vulkan SDK, tooling, code samples, and developer guide today with ray-tracing coverage included.

The Vulkan SDK has now been updated against Vulkan 1.2.162 with the ray-tracing extension supported and likewise the Vulkan Guide and other assets updated as well to cover the new VK_KHR_acceleration_structure, VK_KHR_ray_tracing_pipeline, VK_KHR_ray_query, VK_KHR_pipeline_library, and VK_KHR_deferred_host_operations extensions.

NVIDIA was quick to release a beta driver with the Khronos-approved ray-tracing support. Today though NVIDIA and AMD appear to be officially announcing their drivers with Vulkan ray-tracing support.

So far on Linux it's just the NVIDIA proprietary driver with Vulkan ray-tracing support. AMDVLK nor RADV yet support Vulkan ray-tracing for the new RDNA 2 graphics cards. Intel meanwhile is continuing the work on their Vulkan ray-tracing support in preparation for their Xe-HP hardware that will have RT capabilities.

The additional Vulkan assets around ray-tracing should be available this morning from Khronos.org.